{"id":9763,"date":"2024-02-17T06:35:47","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T06:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9763"},"modified":"2024-02-17T06:35:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T06:35:47","slug":"final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-cover-story-newfound-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9763","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Cover Story – Newfound Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Introduction<\/p>\n

The launch of 1997\u2019s Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation signaled a seismic shift in the video game landscape.\u00a0The transition from pixel art to fully animated computer graphics was a massive enough leap ahead, but the beauty of this classic title was much more than skin deep. Featuring a stellar cast of beloved characters, a rock-solid combat system, and a story with the potential to instill emotions ranging from awe and joy to grief and anger, the legacy of Final Fantasy VII is well-established in the RPG genre and the games industry as a whole.<\/p>\n

In the decades since, technology has evolved, as have trends. What was once the pinnacle of technology and visual fidelity now looks dated, and the attitudes of modern gamers look more towards action than the traditional RPG combat featured in the original Final Fantasy VII. But the love for Final Fantasy VII, its world, its message, and its characters never faded. And fans began clamoring for a modern take on the classic.<\/p>\n

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That prevalent fan request was finally met in 2020 with Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first of three parts reimagining the events of Final Fantasy VII with modern visuals and gameplay. The critical acclaim and strong fan reception showed that Square Enix wasn\u2019t taking the task of remaking its beloved RPG lightly. With the second part, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, on the horizon, we flew to Tokyo, Japan, to meet with Square Enix, get our hands on the game, see exclusive gameplay, and talk to core members of the development team about why this second entry is upping the ante in nearly every way.<\/p>\n

Warning:<\/strong> This article includes <\/em>spoilers<\/strong><\/span> for the original Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake.<\/em><\/p>\n

Remaking FF7<\/p>\n

The Prelude<\/h2>\n

The ground beneath Square Enix\u2019s Tetsuya Nomura\u2019s feet trembled. In his time since serving as a character designer and visual director on Final Fantasy VII, his legend has grown substantially. In addition to working on nearly every acclaimed Final Fantasy game since, Nomura also helped create the Kingdom Hearts series and has become a figurehead and luminary within the stacked ranks of Square Enix\u2019s stable of developers. But this 2015 trip to Los Angeles, California, was different.<\/p>\n

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PlayStation\u2019s E3 2015 livestream had just revealed a teaser trailer featuring the iconic Final Fantasy VII protagonist, Cloud Strife, walking through Midgar in glorious, modern, HD graphics. The dream of so many fans \u2013 a modern remake of the classic RPG \u2013 was finally realized. The fans weren\u2019t the only ones feeling the weight of the moment, though, and it was no longer just the ground that was shaking; it was Nomura\u2019s entire body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no staff members around, so I was kind of just off to the side, standing there alone,\u201d Nomura says. \u201cWhen I heard the cheers from the crowd and the passion, I became overwhelmed, and I started shivering. I was walking like a fawn, just overwhelmed by the intensity of the crowd. I thought, \u2018This has become such a big deal,\u2019 and I wanted to cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road to this moment was long and arduous but something Nomura had dreamt of for years. Operating as a team of one, Nomura had spent part of the 2000s imagining what a modern remake of Final Fantasy VII could look like. Unfortunately, not much progress was made since the rest of the team members were tied up with other projects.<\/p>\n

Around that time, fans started clamoring for a modernized remake of Final Fantasy VII, and the developers began hearing about it from media members. Yoshinori Kitase, who has worked at Square Enix since 1990, serving as director on beloved games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, the original Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy X, was inundated with questions during a series of 2009 interviews.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were on the U.S. media tour for Final Fantasy XIII, and we took on a bunch of interviews, and we got a ton of questions from reporters asking, \u2018When are we going to make a Final Fantasy VII remake?\u2019\u201d Kitase recalls. \u201cJust hearing that so many times, I did think that we would do it one day, that\u2019s for certain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitase returned to Tokyo and approached Nomura about making it a reality. As two of the creators of the original Final Fantasy VII, they noticed the writing on the wall; fan and media demand was at a fever pitch, and Square Enix was beginning to embrace the idea of modern remakes for classic games more than ever before. They knew they had to act.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWithin Square Enix, gradually, remakes were being made, and these ideas for remakes were coming up in other departments,\u201d Nomura says. \u201cIf we weren\u2019t going to do Final Fantasy VII, others were going to do it, so we had to rise up and do it! We had the sense that we had to guard Final Fantasy VII and have to be the ones taking this on or someone else is going to do it. I thought it may be a bit troublesome if other teams without us took on the project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nomura and Kitase are a pair of legends within the Final Fantasy and Square Enix fandom, but they needed help to make it a reality. To create the team, the duo tapped into Square Enix Creative Business Unit I, the group historically responsible for many of the most beloved Final Fantasy titles. Kazushige Nojima, who joined Square Enix in 1994, working on games like Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and X, as well as the Kingdom Hearts series, and Motomu Toriyama, who joined Square Enix in 1995 and worked on the original Final Fantasy VII in addition to Final Fantasy X, XIII, and more, signed on to co-write the remake.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had always hoped to be a part of the title if and when a remake was to be made,\u201d Toriyama says. \u201cI was very happy when hearing the news [that we were making one].\u201d<\/p>\n

But the development team behind this project couldn\u2019t just be members of the original dev team; most had left the company or were working on other projects. \u201cI would say the majority of the dev staff and production members are those who were players of the original, not creators,\u201d Toriyama says.<\/p>\n

Two of those developers who started as fans of the Final Fantasy series before joining Square Enix are Naoki Hamaguchi and Teruki Endo. Hamaguchi joined Square Enix in 2003, working on titles like Final Fantasy XII and the XIII trilogy. After serving as project manager on the mobile title Mobius Final Fantasy, he joined the Remake team as a co-director. Endo got his start in the late 2000s at Capcom, working primarily on the Monster Hunter series, but when he heard about a remake for Final Fantasy VII, as a fan of the original, he couldn\u2019t resist joining the team as battle director.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was working for another gaming company when I heard they were looking for members to be involved on the battle side of creating this game and felt like this was a great opportunity in which I could utilize the skills that I had gained thus far working in the industry,\u201d Endo recalls.<\/p>\n

With the core team assembled, Final Fantasy VII Remake was underway.<\/p>\n

Making of Remake<\/p>\n

Remaking a Classic<\/h2>\n

When a game is as beloved as Final Fantasy VII, modernizing it without alienating fans of the original can be a tricky proposition; if you keep things too close to the original, then you don\u2019t keep up with the latest trends, squandering the opportunity to create something distinct. Conversely, if you push things too far away from the source material, you risk alienating those who made Final Fantasy VII so famous in the first place.<\/p>\n

According to Toriyama, the members of the team who experienced VII as fans, like Hamaguchi and Endo, are more protective of the source material than those who worked on the original title. Kitase worried those younger staff members would be too loyal to the original title, but his concerns eased once the team started working. \u201cThis concern was all for naught because this was clearly not true,\u201d Kitase says. \u201cWe were able to work together very well and realize all of our visions and a game that can be accepted and enjoyed by contemporary users, so that was wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The team worked together to balance the old with the new, to create something that definitively retells the story of Final Fantasy VII with modern conventions while not going too far in either direction. \u201cFor me, it really comes down to considering what it was that the players enjoyed and loved in the original title,\u201d Endo says. \u201cOf course, we expect a variance in each player\u2019s depth and span of what they enjoy and the things that they love, but at the end of the day, I do have to trust my own instincts and thoughts on what I loved and enjoyed playing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Endo\u2019s part \u2013 the battle system \u2013 he opted to blend action with the more traditional Active Time Battle (ATB) mechanics from the original game, in which characters can act once a meter fills. The result appeals to both new and longtime players. \u201cSeeing that the Final Fantasy series has a strong focus on its characters, I believe the action enhances this and lets the players be further immersed into the characters as they play,\u201d Endo says. \u201cAlong with the strategic battles that I believe are key to Final Fantasy VII, I wanted to see how best I could mix these two elements of the command and strategy-based battle with the action that allows for that instant immersion.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Though Endo wanted to introduce action, his desire to balance it with the traditional ATB elements struck a chord with Nomura. \u201cI do have this idea of how Final Fantasy battles should be and should feel,\u201d Nomura says. \u201cWe want to still keep this strategy element, in which the player will consider the elemental weaknesses of enemies during battle while using these action moves and being engaged, intact. That was always my core belief in how we should approach Final Fantasy battles. [\u2026] I thought this was truly vital to this game; I didn\u2019t want it to be a game where it\u2019s a reflex-type action or reflex-based battle; we wanted to combine all of these elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battle system of Final Fantasy VII Remake garnered acclaim, but it\u2019s not the only piece of the title that changed. The visual leap forward is immediately recognizable, and the story received numerous upgrades. Instead of retelling the entire Final Fantasy VII arc in one game, Square Enix opted to release the remake in the form of three games. The first title, Final Fantasy VII Remake, retold the party\u2019s initial push through Midgar \u2013 a section of the original that takes about 6 hours to complete \u2013 across a 30 to 40-hour title.<\/p>\n

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This decision came from Nomura, who identified early on that fully capturing the events of Final Fantasy VII in a modern way and with enough depth to do the story justice wouldn\u2019t be possible in its original one-game form, not to mention the drastically different format the game takes following the party\u2019s emergence from Midgar. \u201cTo recreate the world of Final Fantasy VII as it was in the original today in its full volume, the only way for us to realize this was to divide the titles or else it simply was not possible,\u201d Nomura says. \u201cWe had to divide it, or we can\u2019t do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VII Remake\u2019s extended stay in Midgar fully fleshed out characters previously relegated to minor roles like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie and further developed the personalities and relationships of the main characters like Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Aerith. \u201cWhen the remake project was first decided, at that point, we had already felt that if we are going to take on this series, it\u2019s imperative that we depict the characters much deeper,\u201d Nomura says.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VII Remake was released on PlayStation 4 on April 10, 2020, earning an 87 out of 100 on reviews aggregator Metacritic, including an 8.75 out of 10 from Game Informer. And now, with the quality bar set high and fan expectations even higher, that same team sets out to push the well-known story forward as Cloud and his friends step outside of Midgar and venture into a massive world full of adventure and intrigue in the second act of the Remake series, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.<\/p>\n

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Rebirth’s Changes<\/p>\n

Breaking Out<\/h2>\n

Following the events of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Red XIII have escaped from the restrictive confines of Midgar. This accurately reflects the progression of the story and format in the original Final Fantasy VII, as the party emerges from Midgar\u2019s close quarters and linearity and into an open and explorable world map.<\/p>\n

The longtime Final Fantasy developers have had this in mind ever since Final Fantasy X changed how adventures in the world progress. \u201cWe started off expressing this world that you can venture through with a world map; that was how it was starting with Final Fantasy I,\u201d Kitase, who serves as producer on Rebirth, says. \u201cBut starting with Final Fantasy X, when we entered into this real-time 3D world, this is when the world map development ceased or halted to some degree. With X, it was the style where a player chose a point or an area they would like to go to and traveled there. In that sense, the feeling was that, since it\u2019s real-time 3D, it\u2019s not quite possible to create this full world map anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

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